Joey Bada$$ - Summer Knights (7.25.13 - 8.1.13)

 “Summer Knights” is the second mixtape coming from 18-year old Brooklyn native Joey Bada$$. His moniker and age won’t inspire thoughts of anything beyond easy rap, but just give him a chance and you will recognize him for what he is: a kid with enormous amounts of potential who’s lyrical maturity and wordplay reach far beyond the image that he projects.

My Youth – A fun reggae beat, and while Joey’s flow at time seems to wrestle more than work with the beat it’s never bad enough to distract from the song. Because I’m a sucker for wordplay: “I don’t drink too much, I know the Budweiser”

Death of YOLO - Inspired by death of rapper Ervin McKinness who tweeted “Drunk af going 120 drifting corners #FuckIt YOLO” minutes before his car crashed killing himself and the four passengers, Death of YOLO is the standout song off the mixtape.  The title sets the tone for the death of the YOLO mentality, which is reinforced by the hook and Joey’s first verse. Ironic given he’s among the demographic that affixes #YOLO#SWAG to everything.  “Little did they know I was about to meet my maker / till an angel came down and told me my time was later” a simple, yet effective line given context.

Unorthodox – Closing track, “cause money ain’t no thing if I got it I won’t spend, all I got is my Pros I don’t need to friends” the wordplay with Pros is too good to pass up – meaning both his prose, and his rap crew, Pro Era.

All in all a very solid summer mixtape from a young artist set to do big things in hip hop.

-Marc

#TGIF #chchcheckit #aChordOtW #TechnologyOfTheFuture

Those pink nails clash with the red phone. #colorblind

Ahoy all!

Good news everyone! A Chord of the Week has moved beyond the boring late 1990s world of websites and have added a Twitter account.

Some say that Twitter is what robots yell when they have an orgasm. Some say that M.Night Shyamalan is making the best movie you will ever see, ever, in 150 characters and six seconds because wasting any more of your time would be criminal. All we know is that we're going to use the tag/handle/whathaveyou to more easily share posts and to hopefully get some more discussions going.

Since Twitter already has a few users, we were unable to get the name we really wanted - @BClintonPlayMySax, but we settled on the next best one, @aChordOtW. Please follow us, we'd like to feel your red onion and coffee breath pulsing in our virtual ear to the beat of whatever album in on the blog. We'll try to follow you back, or whatever people do these days on Twitter, but we are awful, just awful, with directions, so we might get lost. All in the name of adventure!

Keep your blinkers, knickers and headphones on.

Josh Ritter - The Beast in Its Tracks (7.10.13 - 7.24.13)

 

We’ve only been waiting since the dawn of human expression, but the perfect “getting over a heartbreak” album has finally arrived, courtesy of one Josh Ritter.  Written in the hangover of his divorce, The Beast In Its Tracks (his first full length album in three years) offers the words of wisdom and empathy that a crushed soul wants and needs to hear.  The melodies are light and the lyrics are heavy, which more or less epitomizes how one feels in the wake of an unwanted break up; thoughts heavy, in need of something uplifting.  Well, this is it.

Ritter’s bruises and scabs haven’t quite healed, as this album riddled with bitterness and signs of lingering pain.  However, he still cannot hide his joy and optimism towards moving on, which writing and recording this album helped him do.  It seems that Ritter’s words, although wide-reaching, are not intended for the listener, but intended to comfort and convince himself that he is over it and in a better place having found someone new to love.  The tracks “Hopeful”, “New Lover”, and “Appleblossom Rag” are excellent examples of this manifestation of emotions.  Each begin with an obvious focus on the former lover, but it is equally obvious where thoughts of “stop thinking about her, man!” entered his mind, the lyrics shifting towards a more positive outlook.  He sings, “I’ve got a new lover now, I hope you’ve got a lover too…” praising the next love and immediate effects it has on the enduring sting of a broken heart.  He continues, presumably with a wide grin, “but if you’re sad and you are lonesome, and you’ve got nobody true, I’d be lying if I said that didn’t make me happy too”, addressing  that difficult and sometimes shameful range of thoughts in a refreshingly blunt manner.

I don’t think there is anything more that I could say that you couldn’t figure out after hearing it for yourself.   Ritter’s writing is exceptional and, as one Amazon reviewer put it, “if his lyrics were prose, you’d underline them.”

- Matthew Blaine

Grateful Dead - American Beauty (6.26.13 - 7.10.13)

So you probably think that the Grateful Dead are just another hippy, tripped out band that has little to no song writing ability.

The Dead's first four albums would leave you to believe just that -- that while the band could pull off a raging show and bring the heat night in and night out, they lacked the ability to enter the studio and lay down tracks that could evoke emotion and translate well to tape. The back-to-back albums released in 1970 obliterated this notion, as the Dead came out with two powerhouse works: Workingman's Dead -- consisting of country, blues and americana roots, and American Beauty -- building off of Workingman's with music showcasing the Dead's song writing ability coupled with masterful sound engineering. 

Simply put, American Beauty, from start to finish, is a work of art, and perhaps my favorite album of all time. Starting with the opening chords of "Box of Rain" the listener is led on a truly American folk rock journey propelled by bluegrass, country western, pop and rock as it defines the band's brand of folk-rock. With assistance from Robert Hunter, Jerry Garcia's landmark songwriting skills hit their apex with broadened subjects of love, loss, consolidation, determination and love. Brokedown Palace, Candyman, Ripple and Attics of My Life are all indicative of these themes. Jerry's voice is soothing and evokes emotion that is true and powerful. What makes the album particularily interesting is it gave the music world two Top Ten hits in Sugar Magnolia and Truckin' while pop and radio were most definatley an afterthought in the recording process. The album (glued firmly by beautiful smoky cabin country rock) is one that will most certainly stand the test of time.

-- No No

Vampire Weekend - Modern Vampires of the City (6.13.13 - 6.27.13)

I've always admired Vampire Weekend and their jolly, buoyant tunes. Their third album, Modern Vampires of the City, is a revelation; it makes me LOVE them. With this release, they tread into darker, more sophisticated territory without losing any of their charm. They don't shed the sound of their past efforts but experiment and subvert, announcing their arrival as serious musicians here to stay for a good long while. It's the perfect album for the impending coastal summer. You'll feel it in your bones.

Best tracks: "Step" and "Hudson."

Dale Earnhart Jr. Jr. - Patterns (6.6.13 - 6.13.13)

Thank you Micah for kicking off the blog. I hope everyone had the chance to listen to Optica, a delicious Swedish serenade. We hope v2 of ACTW is easier to get into and stay on top of – really ride it hard.

They say, give enough monkeys typewriters and you’ll end up with a Shakespeare play. Well, give a NASCAR driver enough left turns and generational suffixes and you’ll end up with some smashing music, baby. 

Frankly, I am unaware of how many minutes there are of actual enjoyment and excitement in a NASCAR race (I doubt it is the full 3.5-5.5 hours) – I would guess it would be closer to 13 minutes and 43 seconds. Coincidentally, that is the same length of time as the EP Patterns by Dale Earnhart Jr. Jr., my selection for week two of ‘don’t call this a comeback’* ACTW. 

This short, but righteous, collection of songs from a Detroit duo, are a blend of indie rock, some r&b rhythms and electro –pop. The only pattern present in this EP is that all the songs are fantastic. Summer is here, which means dance parties outside, driving with the windows down and the end of being/having SAD. This EP is the perfect pill to jump-start the season.

Please, enjoy.

*lyrics from an older Shout Out Louds song. Bonus points for those that identify it.

Shout Out Louds - Optica 5.30.13-6.6.13

It seemed all too fitting that the Shout Out Louds would release Optica while I was here -- 

For years, I dreamt about what adventures in Europe would sound like, look like, feel like, smell like, be like. And for years, the Shout Out Louds informed my imagination about what it could be like to get drunk at a music hall in Switzerland or how the smoke from Belgian cigarettes would dance along the highway or how the morning smells in the French countryside while friends are still warm in their beds.

I live in Brussels now, but not for much longer.

One of the best aspects of everyday life here is that people will say things in English that you've never heard, some combination of words that makes perfect sense in their native tongue but poetically refreshing in your own. It'll sound odd (for sure), but simultaneously filled with some sort of sincere gorgeousness:

Just two men sharing a coffee-- nothing more.

I will be taking flesh for dinner tonight, I think.

Please. Please. Thank you, well. Thank you, well.

When I listen to the Shout Out Louds album Optica, this is what I think about: their lyrical phrasing, their whimsical ballads, their "lets-get-lost-on-a-getaway" tone, the sincerity of sound.

here, my apartment is small. I live in Asia Town. On our small street, a drunkard finds himself crooning at the moon. When the snow traces down on Belgium, I'm drawing at night. I've always worked best at night. The Shout Out Louds are on. I'm living somewhere I shouldn't be, and this is very pleasant.

Micah

Clipse - Hell Hath No Fury 11.30.11-12.6.11

I came across this album years after its 2006 release. Originally, it didn’t even occur to me to give it a chance (“Who’s Clipse?”) until I browsed through some “Best Albums of the Year/Decade” lists in a search for new music. This album was consistently near the top, and after a few weeks of not being able to put it down, I can see why.

Clipse is the duo of Pusha T and Malice, two brothers from Virginia who apparently sold a lot of cocaine before hitting the studio. I’m not talking like pseudo thugs who went to art school (e.g. like Mobb Deep). The authenticity of the lyrics adds to the overall chilling vibe of the record. Pusha and Malice’s straightforward flows are surprisingly captivating and a lot of the word play is downright clever. A choice lyric: “I make All-of-her Twist like Dickens.” The track “Keys Open Doors” is all about how selling “keys” of cocaine opens “doors” to upward social mobility. Neat.

However, the real standout performance on the album goes to The Neptunes, producers extraordinaire. Pharrell’s handiwork provides a perfectly eerie backdrop for Clipse’s rhymes. Unlike so much other rap/hip-hop out there today, it isn’t overproduced; while there’s a lot going on in each track, the beats retain a sparse sound. In this way, the style shares some similarities to early 90’s hip-hop, but with much more variety. The individual parts on Pharrell’s compositions are all weird and very intriguing. To see what I mean by this, check out the chimes on “Ride Around Shining” or the high-pitched steel-drum on “Ain’t Cha.”

Overall, the combination of the dark production and the boastful lyrical content exudes cockiness and brashness that makes this hip-hop album fun to listen to. And it’s so good that I feel like an irreverent badass even when I’m listening to it on my i-pod while wearing business casual attire and walking down Newbury Street.

Hell Hath No Fury is a lean record with no filler, which is refreshing for this genre. No dumb intro and interlude “skits” of gunfights and answering machine messages that stretch the album length to 20+ tracks; no spotlight-stealing features of big name stars. Just a really solid hip-hop record that should go down as a classic.